Cedarwood oil is claimed to reduce oily skin and help reduce acne. While this seems to be a generally accepted notion, I can find almost no studies or firsthand experiences of people actually using cedarwood oil for oily skin, or even acne for that matter. This is all I've been able to find:

1. Johnson and Johnson conducted a study on cedarwood oil and two other topicals to test their effects on oily skin. "A comparison between the treatments indicated that at 3 weeks the average percentage reduction in sebumeter readings on forehead and cheek was best with cedarwood." (http://www.freepaten.../EP1172087.html)

2. A member of hairlosstalk.com conducted his own test by applying cedarwood oil to the left side of his chin, and he said that side of his chin became more dry after a couple of weeks.

It sounds like a promising remedy, so I'm curious, has anyone here tried it? I'm probably going to buy it and test it out myself pretty soon.

Update 6/9/2013:

Even though I made this thread almost two years ago, I didn't actually get around to giving cedarwood oil a trial run until about a month ago (I was experimenting with too many other things when I made this thread). I make a mixture of cedarwood oil, tea tree oil, lavender oil, argan oil, and jojoba oil, and apply it to the right side of my nose twice a day.

Although my results so far are not dramatic, the rate of oil excretion on the right side of my nose seems to have slowed down somewhat. The excretion rate between the two sides of my nose was lopsided after my peppermint oil experiment last year (http://www.acne.org/...oil-production/), but now it's about even.

By sheer coincidence, after I started using my new oil concoction, I received a PM from redsfan14 who told me that he started applying a mixture of grapeseed oil and cedarwood oil to his face. He guesstimates that his oil has reduced by about 50%. Now for the sake of full disclosure, he also started taking vitamins A, E, B, D, zinc, green extract pills, and fish oil at the same time. So in both of our cases, there are other variables to consider, but I'm inclined to think it's the cedarwood oil producing these results.

If anyone else is interested in giving cedarwood oil a shot, I think it would be a worthwhile experiment.

I should note that there are different kinds of cedarwood oil. I use the cedrus atlantica variety, which is the same one used in the Johnson and Johnson study. redsfan14 is using juniperus mexicana, and the guy from Hairlosstalk also used a juniperus variety but didn't specify which one.